Top news in social media is connected with the decision of Facebook to make WhatsApp carry ads. Reports say, Chris Daniels, Vice President of WhatsApp, has said that the company is inclined to monetise the service by allowing businesses to run advertisements.

“Facebook will start monetising WhatsApp, and show ads in the ‘Status’ section of the app”, Chris Daniels has said. This is also in line with Facebook’s plan to monetise the ‘WhatsApp for Business’ app which is currently free for businesses. As it is, Facebook is going to charge companies for running ads on its platform. These ads will be interlinked to the advertiser’s profile on WhatsApp.

Though Chris has not disclosed a timeline for the roll-out of the advertisements, reports expect it to follow the add policy in 2019.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, WhatsApp is currently being tested by around 100 companies.

It’s not clear how ads on WhatsApp will function, whether they will be shown randomly to users or if they will be targeted based on users’ interests.

WhatsApp, which is the world’s largest messaging application and has over 250 million users in India, has remained ads-free platform since its debut. Things, however, started to change after Facebook acquired the company in 2014 for $19 billion.

WhatsApp founder Brian Acton, who left Facebook in September 2017, earlier this month said that Mark Zuckerberg had planned to monetise WhatsApp by serving targeted ads reports Hindustan Times.

“Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy,” Acton is on record having told Forbes.